Park Center Graduate’s Legacy Lives on Through Scholarship
A Brooklyn Park family’s tragedy helped create an opportunity to send a group of local students to college.
“Honestly, I just want to fight for people who are abused in the school system, students who deal with domestic and sexual violence in their home,” said Emily Ellis, a senior from Osseo Senior High School. “So yeah, I just want to work with young students and women.”
Ellis is one of five seniors from the Osseo School District who received scholarships of $5,000 apiece Thursday night, courtesy of the Moe123 Scholarship Fund.
The scholarship was created in honor of Mostafa Sarim, an alumnus of Park Center who contracted the flu and died in 2018 at the age of 41.
Sarim valued education. So his family established the scholarship as a way to honor his life on the anniversary of his death.
“We’re not quite sure why he was taken so early. But we believe there was a reason behind it,” said Massih Marty Sarim, the founder and chairman of the Moe123 Scholarship Fund. “And the best we could do is do something positive out of that. And I feel like we’re on the right track.”
Thursday’s event at Edinburgh USA in Brooklyn Park was the second annual Moe123 Scholarship awards banquet.
Next year, board members hope to distribute $50,000 in scholarship money to students in the Osseo School District.
Maple Grove Senior High School
Osseo Senior High School
Park Center Senior High School
